


What Could Have Been (One)

by secondalto



Series: Written in Flesh and Blood [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe of an Alternate Universe, Fluff and Angst, Multi, One-Sided Relationship, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 14:35:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1944831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secondalto/pseuds/secondalto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soul Marks the Avengers didn't get</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Could Have Been (One)

**Author's Note:**

> when the muse is bored, she gives me things like this to write.

Tony Stark doesn’t believe in soul mates. That’s because he’s in his mid-forties and hasn’t gotten a mark yet. Chances are he’ll never get one. So it’s a fucking HUGE surprise when the name _Steve Rogers_ appears across his chest in red, white, and blue. Tony scoffs; Captain America is as dead as Tony’s father, the man who dedicated his life to looking for the national icon.

Tony drinks. He has ever since he came back from Afghanistan with the equivalent of a nuclear reactor in his chest. After all that he built a suit, changed the direction of his company, killed Obie and became a reluctant superhero. He’s lost in booze and engineering. Pepper left him a long time ago. She deserves better anyway. He meets Capsicle while helping out the douchebags of SHIELD. Turns out the paragon of American virtues hates him.

The serum left Cap unable to receive a mark, and there’s no word if he had one before. They manage to work together long enough to save the world, but Tony doesn’t come out of the portal. His will leaves the suits to Rhodey, and the company to Pepper. The ‘bots and JARVIS shut down at the moment of his death. No one ever knows about his mark.

*~*~*~*~*

Steve Rogers does have a mark before he is signed up for Project Rebirth. But it is a platonic mark: the name of his best friend Bucky Barnes, written in gold on his arm. It disappears after the process that turns him into Captain America. Doctor Erskine tells him this might happen, so it means he’ll never get a romantic mark and he’s okay with that.

When he wakes up and meets Howard’s son Tony, he’s disappointed. Steve hopes that Tony will find the help he needs. Steve works with Tony reluctantly, watching out for the man to make sure he isn’t drunk while they are trying to save the world. He mourns for the potential when Tony dies in space.

Steve meets Sam Wilson months later, while in D.C. Sam lost his soul mate Riley in the most recent war. They hit it off and eventually fall in love. They both become spokesmen for the anti-soul mark movement. They get married in New York, buying a brownstone in Brooklyn where they raise a baseball team’s worth of adopted kids.

*~*~*~*~*

Natalia Romanova meets the man she calls Yasha while training at the Red Room. He teaches her much in the few weeks they spend together. Then something, Talia never figures out what, triggers a breakdown of his programming. Yasha runs from his handlers. She follows soon after.

Without a regular dose of the chemical suppressant the Red Room gave her, Talia gets her mark. It reads _Bucky Barnes_ across her wrist. When she finds Yasha a week later, he sees her mark. This results in further breakdown of his programming and he remembers he is Bucky. He gets her name on his arm a day later. They spend the next thirty years working as very high priced assassins. Their relationship is a tempestuous one. They fight, try to kill each other, leave for months at a time, but they always drift back to each other. Talia can never have children, so the subject never comes up.

The last documented sighting of the Winter Solider and the Black Widow is at the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Several survivors report a red-headed woman and a man with a metal arm helping them escape. Although alleged sightings still occur and rumors persist, it is believed that the two died there, entombed in the bowels of the complex.

*~*~*~*~*~*

When Pepper Potts leaves Tony Stark, she goes to work for SHIELD. It’s through them (well, mostly Phil) that she meets Clint Barton. Or more accurately, she reunites with him. They had been childhood sweethearts. When he’d run away with the circus, Pepper never thought she would see him again. His name is written over her heart. Clint has hers on his forearm. But it doesn’t read _Pepper_ ; instead it reads _Ginny_ , the nickname he’d called her all those years ago.

Being with Clint is more harrowing than when she was with Tony. Clint is only human, with no powers or suit to keep him safe. But they make it work. In public he is the loving and devoted husband of the CEO of Stark Enterprises. In secret he is Hawkeye, founding member of the Avengers. They have two sets of twins with their mother’s red hair. Clint teaches them all how to handle themselves.

*~*~*~*~*

Darcy Lewis doesn’t get a name; she gets a symbol. It’s a tiny hammer stamped on her right hip. It will continually confuse her until one night in the New Mexican desert. She’s interning for Jane when a man falls from the sky. Darcy tases him. Turns out he’s her soul mate. Thor is an alien prince from a place called Asgard.

Thor has a bolt of electricity marked on his chest, exactly where Darcy hit him. When he gets his powers back and defeats his crazy ass brother, he comes back to take Darcy to Asgard. It seems that only a few Asgardians ever get soul marks. When Thor got his, his mother took him to their seers to find out who his mate was and where she would be found. Odin was none too pleased when it turned out Thor’s chosen was from Midgard.

But Frigga smoothed the way for Darcy by pointing out that some of the greatest kinds of Asgard had Midgardian queens. Darcy is given a chance to eat an apple of Iðunn. She does so after she gets a chance to say goodbye to everyone she knows back on Earth. She and Thor rule for several millennia and have a handful of children. They all grow up hearing the story of the mighty Lady Darcy and her box of lightning.

*~*~*~*~*~

Soul mates Jane Foster and Bruce Banner meet at a physics conference. Bruce is the world’s leading expert in gamma radiation; Jane is trying to get the academic world to listen to her theories on Einstein- Rosen Bridges. They bond quickly over science, Pop Tarts and a love of all things Monty Python. Jane tells him about the struggles of being a woman in a male dominated field. Bruce tells her about his ex-girlfriend who saved him from a potentially dangerous accident.

They are both recruited by SHIELD for different reasons. Bruce accompanies Jane to New Mexico. When her theories are validated by the appearance of Thor, Jane rockets to prominence with Bruce alongside her as they explore all the possibilities.

Trading on her friendship with Darcy, Jane and Bruce are frequent visitors to Asgard. They bring back technology that revolutionizes several fields of science. They both win Nobel Prizes, several of them. Bruce and Jane have a daughter who spends her childhood playing with princes of Asgard and her adulthood furthering her parent’s work.

*~*~*~*~*

Phil Coulson uses his “death” to be with his soul mate, Audrey. He moves to Portland and becomes a history teacher. He mysteriously receives signed Captain America cards in the mail one day. But his experience with the Avengers and his time with SHIELD has soured his love for the hero. He uses Christies to auction them off. The proceeds fund his and Audrey’s retirement as well as college funds for their three children.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you like the idea of Pepper/Clint, [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2774759) is a whole fic about them.


End file.
